The tragic operas of the French Baroque can be rough going for the new listener, whose eyes may glaze over when hearing about rules of French prosody, classical models, and Lully's dominance of the scene. But this single-disc recital solves any problems you may have had in encountering operatic music from Lully to Gluck. Credit soprano Véronique ...
Once you accept the fundamental premise -- Joseph Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne are gussied-up folk songs -- they become the cutest little things in the world. Of course, not everybody can accept the premise since it involves accepting, first, that the folk song is a legitimate vehicle for high culture, and second, that a little sentimentality ...
With this exciting release, Fabio Biondi, the outstanding Europa Galante, and a cast led by stars Véronique Gens and Vivica Genaux strike a decisive blow for Alessandro Scarlatti's obscure Oratorio per la Santissima Trinità. Old-fashioned even in its day, the work is a musicalized instructional debate about the mysteries of the Holy Trinity ...
If the orchestrally lush, star-studded recordings of Georg Solti represent one end of the Mozartian taste spectrum, then this 1999 Così fan tutte by René Jacobs, the Concerto Köln, and a less well known cast surely represents the other. In the pursuit of period authenticity, Jacobs employs a greatly downsized original-instrument ensemble, ...
Even in context of the original instruments and historically informed performance practice movement, there are other ways to perform Bach's B minor Mass than the way Philippe Herreweghe performs it. To name only the most obvious alternatives, there's the austerely inward Leonhardt approach, the extravagantly outward Gardiner approach, and the ...
After almost 400 years, you might think Monteverdi's L'Orfeo would have lost its luster. But in the right hands it can still be deeply exciting, allowing you to relive the birth of an electric and emotionally charged new art form. Emmanuelle Haïm's new L'Orfeo, starring Ian Bostridge, is that kind of experience. It combines truly electric ...
First things first: if you're seeing a picture of this disc on the site of an online retailer, be aware that it contains the Mass in C minor, K. 427, not the "Mass in C," promised by the cover, which would more likely be the "Coronation" Mass in C major, K. 337. It is always a shame when designers are given power of diktat over content editors. ...
No matter how many times you've heard Le nozze di Figaro, you owe it to yourself to hear this Le nozze di Figaro. It is fresh and funny and silly and moving and enchanting and as wise and as knowing as the work itself. The singers are the ideal kind of opera singers who make you forget they're singing because their acting is so good and their ...
Soprano Véronique Gens and conductor Serge Baudo are ideally paired in this CD of selections from Canteloube's folk song arrangements, Chants d'Auvergne and Chants de France, as well as his original composition Triptyque. Both performers bring an innately Gallic sensibility to the songs -- a strong sense of lyricism; a predilection for warm, lush ...
First things first: if you're seeing a picture of this disc on the site of an online retailer, be aware that it contains the Mass in C minor, K. 427, not the "Mass in C," promised by the cover, which would more likely be the "Coronation" Mass in C major, K. 337. It is always a shame when designers are given power of diktat over content editors. ...
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